The Hardest Word
by pdragon76
Summary: When the boys hit the skids on a hunt, they have some time to ...er, kill...at the grave of Harley Simco. Spoilers through S2.  Warning for language.


**Disclaimer: All things Supernatural belong to Kripke not me (Rinse & Repeat)**

**A/N: Unbeta'd so all niggles, wtf's and humdingers are mine, all mine. Inspired by challenge #7 at foundficspn over at LJ**

'When you're ready, Dean.'

He held up an irritated finger. Sam could _wait_. If he wanted gold – _and that's what Sam had said, he'd said it had to be GOLD_ - he could wait.

_Better lay it on thick._ That's what he'd said. So he could just wait.

Sam fished the EMF reader out of his pocket and turned a lazy circle beside Harley Simco's headstone. Nothing. Only the crickets and the muted lattice of shadows thrown down through the trees by the almost full moon. The breeze shifted Sam's fringe into his eyes and he swiped it out of the way with the back of his hand. Dean was really dialing this up.

'Okay, how's this:' Dean rubbed his hands together, looked up at him and paused dramatically for effect. '_Sorry._'

Sam had to hand it to him. It wasn't bad. He really got those eyes behind it. If he hadn't known better, he would have totally bought it. It was without a doubt the most heartfelt and compelling sorry he'd ever heard from his brother.

That being said, there hadn't been many to compare it with.

He nodded approvingly, waited. They stared at each other. Sorry Dean and Impressed Sam.

Finally Sam said: 'Sorry for what?'

Dean blanked. 'I don't know. I gotta have a reason?'

Sam walked a tight, disgusted circle around the grave. He shook his head. Dean threw his hands in the air.

'Hey, you didn't say anything about _meaning_ it. I have to _mean _it?' He hooked the toe of his boot beneath the shotgun on the grass and hackeyed it cleanly up into his open hand.

Sam held up the EMF. 'Well, I'm not getting anything.'

'So you do it then. You're all broody and sorry about shit. This is _your gig_.'

He was right about that. Sam had done all of the work. He'd researched the local texts, found the cemetery and the grave. He'd even performed the summoning ritual by himself. Dean had been there mostly in a coffee supplying capacity. Well, coffee _drinking_ capacity more than _supplying_.

But now here they were, stymied by what should have been the easiest part of this hunt. They were at the rocksalt end of the day, cannons at the ready. Just no Harley Simco. According to the local lore, this spirit preyed on remorseful souls. It was attracted to regret. Guilt. Jesus Christ, it had Winchester practically stamped all over it. But if Dean's inaugural performance was anything to go by, Harley wasn't getting up from his eternal nap for a couple of tire-kickers brandishing a salt loaded shotgun.

Sam pocketed the EMF reader again. He sat on the edge of Harley's headstone, crossed his arms and jiggled his knees. _There must be a million things I'm sorry about. There ARE a million things I'm sorry about._ He chewed his lip. Turned his thoughts to Jess. _This should be a piece of cake…_

Dean meandered through the graves nearby, read a few of the inscriptions. _In Loving Memory of…Rest in Peace… Finally at Peace… Much Loved blah blah blah_. It was always the same tired old crap, different names. No one ever just cut loose and said what they really thought.

_Here Lies a Twisted Fucked Up Individual. Finally. Good Riddance. _How come you never saw any epitaphs like that?

When he turned back, Sam was still perched on the headstone deep in thought. The wind picked up through the trees enough to give Dean pause. He tuned in to that internal radar, listened intently. He doubted it was anything you could record, but he swore to god sometimes the air got a crackle to it before the shit hit the fan. The wind died down again and he relaxed some.

'You know, I'm sorry I never returned that Chrissy girl's calls,' he suggested helpfully.

Sam looked up, vexed. 'No, you're not.'

Dean flapped a hand at him. 'Aah, you're right. I will be next time we're drivin' through Pensylvania, though.'

Sam stood up and stretched his arms above his head, fingers laced. 'I'm sure she's not the only stripper in Pittsburgh, Dean.'

'She was a dancer, Sam. And smart. Like, your kinda smart. Studying somethin'. Marine biology or some shit like that. Somethin' to do with dolphins and crap.'

'You know, I think it's really beautiful – the personal interest you take in these women.' Sam felt in his jacket for the EMF again.

Dean flipped him the bird. _Hey, it is what it is._ Sam paced a little, gave the task at hand another once over.

'So what – you reckon I just say it out loud?'

Dean shrugged, swept an arm out around the moonlit cemetery. 'Well, thinking it isn't getting us anywhere.' He rolled a hand encouragingly. 'Let's have at it, Pouty Pants.'

Sam stepped up in front of Harley's grave. He hesitated, the EMF reader tapping against his thigh. _Stop jiggling_, thought Dean. He always jiggled when he was nervous. It gave Dean the shits.

'I'm sorry I didn't propose to Jess before she died.'

When Sam looked back at Dean, his brother was frozen to the spot, mortified.

'What?' he said self-consciously.

Dean held up a hand. 'Nothing. Just….you know, don't ease on into this or anything. I mean – whip those big guns right out there, kiddo.'

'Well, I figure it's gonna take something pretty big, right?'

Dean pointed a menacing finger at him.

'Just…keep that shit in check. I'm not huggin' you. There's no hugging.'

Sam rubbed his forehead, huffed through a weary smile. 'I don't wanna be out here all night, Dean. And it's fine, really. I'm sorry, but I'm fine.' He frowned at the EMF reader. 'I don't get it. I really am sorry about that.'

Dean flipped the shotgun up and rested it on his shoulder. 'Maybe it takes a while.'

So they waited.

Eventually Dean said: 'You did that thing with the anise, right?'

'Yes.'

'You're sure?'

'Yes.'

'Cause last time, you forgot tha-'

'-I'm not an idiot, Dean!'

'Okay, okay. I'm just askin'. Dean waved down Sam's rising indignation.

He bounced the shotgun down off his shoulder, feeling the smooth slide of the metal against his fingers and the weight of it through his wrist. He flicked it open and checked the chambers, snapped it shut again.

There was nothing moving in the shadows on the periphery. He knew it without looking directly at anything in particular. That was how you saw things at this time of night. By not looking at them. You waited for an _absence_ in the stillness. And when something did move? In darkness like this, where you couldn't name things till it was too late? It kicked into fifth gear every sense and every instinct on every multi-storey level of consciousness. Dean doubted there was a narcotic on earth that could get him anywhere near that split second of adrenalin between detection and reaction.

It made Sam want to puke. Dean knew, because he had a few times. Not in the thick of things, but afterwards. Like last week in Pittsburgh. While Dean was bouncing off the walls and flicking the excess stress response out of his shaking hands, Sam had been doubled over behind the alleyway dumpster throwing up.

Each to their own.

This graveyard was huge. Endless rows of tombstones in various states of disrepair. They had come in through the memorial gardens, neat lines of plaques nestled between rosebushes and mulch, the air heavy with rich soil. Harley Simco had joined the fertilization project earlier, probably before the gardens were even conceived. In this section of the cemetery the stones showed more wear, sagged with the burden of neglect and forget. Grief had an expiry date. In a hundred years, who's gonna care?

Dean wandered to the edge of the pathway where the immaculate green of the soldiers cemetery began, the lines of white markers falling repeatedly into formation down diagonals and straights as he walked the length of the path. Disciplined even in death.

In a different world, a different life, his father might have been laid to rest beneath one of those markers. Dean was glad he hadn't been, and he wasn't exactly sure why.

Sam shook his head in answer to the unspoken question on Dean's face as he returned from his stroll.

'Well, I gotta tell ya, Harley,' Dean announced, looking at his watch, 'I sure am sorry Sam's fucked up this summoning spell.'

Sam returned his volley with genuine disgust. 'You know what you should be sorry about? You should be sorry about what you did in that bathroom this morning.'

Dean threw back his head and laughed maniacally.

'I mean, Jesus Christ, light a fucking match.'

Dean cocked a doubtful eyebrow. 'Dude, the last I needed in there was a naked flame. Believe me.'

Sam was on a roll. '_**I'm**_ sorry you haven't made a single meaningful connection with a woman in the last two years.'

Dean opened his mouth to speak and Sam cut him short. 'Impala doesn't count, Dean.'

His brother struck back.

'Yeah? Well, I'm sorry you can't seem to pick up a single goddamn chick no matter how many towns we roll through or how many FREAKIN' beers I get into you. The inside of that _Impala's_ seen more naked women than you have this last year.'

Sam cringed. 'I don't wanna know what you've been doing in the car.'

'With your track record? You should be taking _**notes. **_Lengthy notes.'

Dean came back to the headstone and slid down against it, one arm wrapped around the barrel of the shotgun. He raked a hand down his face, groaned.

'Come on, where is this guy? Be sorry, Sam.'

'I'm trying.'

'You're the mopiest son of a bitch I have ever met in my entire life. It shouldn't be this hard.'

Sam sank onto the grass beside him, forearms resting on his knees. Truth be told, Dean didn't mind the wait. He could think of worse things to be doing than sitting there with his brother in the cool crisp air, a comfortable silence between them. Nights like this he was happy to be outdoors, pitied people who curled on couches staring at TVs, living their indoor lives. This was where it was at. In the dark where the unspeakable things were, jacked into the kind of mainframe that could leave you twanging – _or dead_ – by daybreak. Doing something that mattered.

He felt purposeful. One hand curled around the cool steel of the shotgun. The loose coil of anticipation winding behind his ribs. He felt capable and strong and useful. He knew who he was, what he was doing and why. How many people could honestly say that about themselves?

Right now, he knew. No question. No wonder he couldn't think of anything he was really sorry about or for.

'You remember that time I tossed you in the pool at that trailer park in Indiana? You busted your chin open?'

Sam snorted. 'I thought Dad was gonna kill you.'

He leant back against the gravestone, and Dean could feel by the shake of his shoulders that he still thought that was pretty funny.

Dean shook his head. 'Yeah. Well, I was sorry about _that_. Geez, Dad _**made**_ me sorry. I tell ya, it was like I'd thrown the fuckin' shotgun into that pool. He was so mad. Man, I laid in bed aaaalll night listening for the car trunk opening. Thought he was going kill me in my sleep.'

Sam laughed a little louder and Dean caught his eye, all lopsided Winchester smirk. Sam had driven him nuts back then. Still did, when he thought about it. _Man, oh man - you still do, little brother. _

'Still nothing.' Sam tapped the EMF reader against his shin.

Dean shook his head and rolled his shoulders. His neck cracked audibly. Sam scratched the back of his head, started to say something and stopped. Dean sniffed, frowned at him.

'What?'

'No, I just – You know, I know I've said it before, man. But I'm still…I'm still so sorry about Duluth. And not just Duluth. That whole thing.'

Dean winced, more out of irritation than anything else. He looked away, and Sam suddenly wished he hadn't brought it up. They hadn't done a lot of talking about Duluth and what had happened back at Bobby's. Sam had made a few carefully timed and courageous attempts to discuss it but Dean had shot him down with all the readability of a house brick. Sam still had no idea how he felt about any of it.

Apparently, he wasn't finding out tonight.

Dean was still gazing out across the darkened cemetery when he broke the silence: 'Where the fuck is this ghost. My back is killing me.' He shifted against the headstone.

'I'm sorry I cracked the car door on that pole last week,' Sam offered. _Change of subject. Moving right along….. _

Dean closed his eyes and shook his head slowly at the memory.

'I may still fuck your shit up over that. When you least expect it.'

There was forgiveness and damnation both in the stony glare he leveled at Sam. It was about the car door and it wasn't. Only his brother could do that. _How did he do that? _

'You know what I'm sorry about?' Dean drew his legs up, crossed them beneath him. He stabbed at the grass in front of his boot with his thumb. 'I'm sorry about Dad.'

Sam thought about that, nodded. 'Yeah, me too.'

'No, I don't mean…you know. I mean I'm sorry about what he said.'

'What he said when?'

'In the hospital, before he…I'm sorry he said it. I mean, it's one thing to think it, but - he didn't have to say it. You know? Fuckin' ass shoulda known I could never have gone through with it anyways. He shoulda just kept his mouth shut. '

Dean had thought about it plenty of times. What that had meant for Sam, that their Dad had dropped by on his way out, just to throw that cat among the pigeons. _There's something wrong with your brother, son. You might have to take him out._ An exercise in the ultimate rejection. John Winchester had thrown himself at the pit of hell to save Dean's life, but he'd been prepared for the necessity of taking his youngest son out.

'You think he would of done it? If it had come to that?' There was something wrong with his brother alright. He was a _freaking mind reader_.

'No, man. He woulda found a way. This is Dad we're talking about, Sam. He would have found a way.'

Sam's chin dipped and he nodded. He radiated doubt. The air thickened with it.

'Hey, Sam.' Dean twisted against the headstone to face his brother, shoulder against cool marble. 'We're blood, man. Dad. You. Me. We'd have all three of us gone down swinging before it came to that. And it's still you go, I go. All the way. You know that.'

Sam nodded, gave him a bemused smile. Dean couldn't tell if it smacked of reassurance or skepticism.

_That's what I'm really sorry about, Dad. That you might have been ready to do it. I'm sorry that you thought for even a second that I might have been able to. And now he's gotta ask the question, maybe every single day inside that over-thinking skull of his. I'm sorry I gotta duck and weave and maybe lie to cover your dead fucking ass right now. _

_I'm sorry Stanford wasn't far enough away for you to push him – you had to give him that final shove clean out the door of this family on your way through. And now I've always gotta have one hand balled up in the back of his shirt, trying to keep him on the ice, keep what's left of this family from slipping off the edge. _

_And why am I here being sorry about any of this?_

_**He said that I had to save you…that nothing else mattered and that if I couldn't I had to kill you. He said I might have to kill you, Sammy.**_

_Because you went and gave me the option of failing. Why'd you do that? All those years we were growing up and failure wasn't ever an option. Why'd you have to go and do that? _

_But I'm not really mad at you, am I? 'Cause why the fuck did I go and tell him?_

The EMF lit up in Sam's hands and he jumped.

'Oh hey, look.'

Dean palmed the grass, came up smoothly onto his feet off the shotgun. He monkey gripped Sam's outstretched arm, hauled him up beside him.

_StupidStupidStupid…why the fuck did I have to tell him?_

'Finally. Let's do this. '

* * *

Thanks for reading. 


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